Hi,
We discussed this on #centos after yet another "centos" user had problem using yum. What is missing is a page targetted at integrators/distributors with a list of requirements for using the "CentOS" product name or even saying it is derived, based or build on CentOS.
We might be able to kill more than one bird with a single stone, so I am looking for more things we want to prevent distributors/integrators doing without making it impossible for them to use CentOS altogether.
My first concern was the support problem, what do we (at minimum) expect to have when users say they have a CentOS. A working yum using the CentOS official repositories, a minimal set of official packages (which ?).
Without complying to the list of requirements, they may not refer to CentOS (and people will not have the wrong expectations for support).
http://wiki.centos.org/About/CentOS-product-definition
Feedback please ?
Dag Wieers wrote:
Hi,
We discussed this on #centos after yet another "centos" user had problem using yum. What is missing is a page targetted at integrators/distributors with a list of requirements for using the "CentOS" product name or even saying it is derived, based or build on CentOS.
This issue crops up often on the forums too.
We might be able to kill more than one bird with a single stone, so I am looking for more things we want to prevent distributors/integrators doing without making it impossible for them to use CentOS altogether.
My first concern was the support problem, what do we (at minimum) expect to have when users say they have a CentOS. A working yum using the CentOS official repositories, a minimal set of official packages (which ?).
Cases seen on the forums often involve non-existent or broken yum and/or custom a non-CentOS kernel. Those users tend to get pointed to the BrokenVserver Wiki page. So an unadulterated working yum and CentOS kernel as a starting point?
Without complying to the list of requirements, they may not refer to CentOS (and people will not have the wrong expectations for support).
http://wiki.centos.org/About/CentOS-product-definition
Feedback please ?
--- On Mon, 12/22/08, Ned Slider ned@unixmail.co.uk wrote:
From: Ned Slider ned@unixmail.co.uk Subject: Re: [CentOS-devel] Defining what CentOS is To: "The CentOS developers mailing list." centos-devel@centos.org Received: Monday, December 22, 2008, 11:53 AM Dag Wieers wrote:
Hi,
We discussed this on #centos after yet another
"centos" user had problem
using yum. What is missing is a page targetted at integrators/distributors with a list of requirements
for using the
"CentOS" product name or even saying it is
derived, based or build on
CentOS.
This issue crops up often on the forums too.
We might be able to kill more than one bird with a
single stone, so I am
looking for more things we want to prevent
distributors/integrators doing
without making it impossible for them to use CentOS
altogether.
My first concern was the support problem, what do we
(at minimum) expect
to have when users say they have a CentOS. A working
yum using the CentOS
official repositories, a minimal set of official
packages (which ?).
Cases seen on the forums often involve non-existent or broken yum and/or custom a non-CentOS kernel. Those users tend to get pointed to the BrokenVserver Wiki page. So an unadulterated working yum and CentOS kernel as a starting point?
centos-release package and the affecting package being build by CentOS build system could be also an start point to be considered a centos support case, and when I write "support" I mean the usual way centos provide support
thanks roger
On Mon, 22 Dec 2008, Dag Wieers wrote:
Without complying to the list of requirements, they may not refer to CentOS (and people will not have the wrong expectations for support).
I ping'ed you in that channel as to the addition at /Admin, and as I got no reply, delinked it there
I did a preliminary pass on the page as it is a discussion draft, marking open items
-- Russ herrold
Dag Wieers wrote:
We might be able to kill more than one bird with a single stone, so I am looking for more things we want to prevent distributors/integrators doing without making it impossible for them to use CentOS altogether.
so, a sort of Best Practices for these people, sounds like a good idea. I should dig out my talk from last Fosdem as well. That might go well with this page.
My first concern was the support problem, what do we (at minimum) expect to have when users say they have a CentOS. A working yum using the CentOS official repositories, a minimal set of official packages (which ?).
Without complying to the list of requirements, they may not refer to CentOS (and people will not have the wrong expectations for support).
http://wiki.centos.org/About/CentOS-product-definition
Feedback please ?
Its not immediately clear as to who this is targeting. Is it for people who base their products off CentOS ? or is it for the Users who end up with broken setups ? The reason for my confusion is that the doc seems to target the product builders, but the support issue is something that comes down to the users.
Also, as far as I am concerned, if their product has >= 1 rpm taken from CentOS, then thats what it is, based on CentOS, based around CentOS, incorporating CentOS, whatever one might term it as. If its got bits from CentOS, they should be able to tell people its got bits from CentOS.
On Mon, 22 Dec 2008, Karanbir Singh wrote:
Dag Wieers wrote:
My first concern was the support problem, what do we (at minimum) expect to have when users say they have a CentOS. A working yum using the CentOS official repositories, a minimal set of official packages (which ?).
Without complying to the list of requirements, they may not refer to CentOS (and people will not have the wrong expectations for support).
http://wiki.centos.org/About/CentOS-product-definition
Feedback please ?
Its not immediately clear as to who this is targeting. Is it for people who base their products off CentOS ? or is it for the Users who end up with broken setups ? The reason for my confusion is that the doc seems to target the product builders, but the support issue is something that comes down to the users.
We have a document for users were we urge them to harass the integrator already. But I think it makes more sense what we expect from integrators than to proxy-by-user without any guidelines.
So yes, we are targetting integrators using CentOS (and their users maybe indirectly but not per se).
Also, as far as I am concerned, if their product has >= 1 rpm taken from CentOS, then thats what it is, based on CentOS, based around CentOS, incorporating CentOS, whatever one might term it as. If its got bits from CentOS, they should be able to tell people its got bits from CentOS.
Right, and then we get complaining users asking us why they can't do this or that and then this is because their yum is broken by design. Or they have no security updates. And what happens on the forums/IRC, they get told they are NOT using CentOS.
You get 2 parties hating each other and the guilty party earns the cash and maybe doesn't care :)
Fine by me, because I'm generally not on those forums. But I see the 2 parties hurt (and wasting time).
Dag Wieers wrote:
We have a document for users were we urge them to harass the integrator already. But I think it makes more sense what we expect from integrators than to proxy-by-user without any guidelines.
yes. Also, the page we point people to at the moment is focused around VPS's - which are a large part of the culprits, but might not be the whole set. I wonder if there is an easy way to identify the other 'culprits' ( for the lack of a better term ), and maybe have specific wiki pages that address their own 'special' case.
Right, and then we get complaining users asking us why they can't do this or that and then this is because their yum is broken by design. Or they have no security updates. And what happens on the forums/IRC, they get told they are NOT using CentOS.
'using CentOS' or 'using something derived from CentOS' or 'using something that includes portions of CentOS' could potentially be very different from each other.
You get 2 parties hating each other and the guilty party earns the cash and maybe doesn't care :)
ok, so a two pronged approach - one targetting the providers, and focus on best practises and another set of wiki pages, working on a 'recovery path' that users of these setups might be able to walk through to bring their machine upto a stable status.
It can, ofcourse only be a best effort from the CentOS side of things - eg, you cant 'fix' a OpenVZ install, its not going to work if you fix it all the way. Neither is a Plesk or cPanel install. If you 'fix that' the product itself stops working. What we could do is make the situation clear to both sides, and give them both material to work with.
my 2c worth.
Karanbir Singh wrote:
Dag Wieers wrote:
You get 2 parties hating each other and the guilty party earns the cash and maybe doesn't care :)
ok, so a two pronged approach - one targetting the providers, and focus on best practises and another set of wiki pages, working on a 'recovery path' that users of these setups might be able to walk through to bring their machine upto a stable status.
It can, ofcourse only be a best effort from the CentOS side of things - eg, you cant 'fix' a OpenVZ install, its not going to work if you fix it all the way. Neither is a Plesk or cPanel install. If you 'fix that' the product itself stops working. What we could do is make the situation clear to both sides, and give them both material to work with.
my 2c worth.
Agreed :)
On Mon, 22 Dec 2008, Karanbir Singh wrote:
Its not immediately clear as to who this is targeting. Is it for people who base their products off CentOS ? or is it for the Users who end up with broken setups ? The reason for my confusion is that the doc seems to target the product builders, but the support issue is something that comes down to the users.
Also, as far as I am concerned, if their product has >= 1 rpm taken from CentOS, then thats what it is, based on CentOS, based around CentOS, incorporating CentOS, whatever one might term it as. If its got bits from CentOS, they should be able to tell people its got bits from CentOS.
coming to it 'cold', I assumed it was targetted at those basing 'product' on CentOS. Sort of a short version of how to live well with the community.
I suggest a piece on or link to good rpm naming/disttag usage, etc.
---------------------------------------------------------------------- Jim Wildman, CISSP, RHCE jim@rossberry.com http://www.rossberry.com "Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one." Thomas Paine
Karanbir Singh wrote:
Dag Wieers wrote:
We might be able to kill more than one bird with a single stone, so I am looking for more things we want to prevent distributors/integrators doing without making it impossible for them to use CentOS altogether.
so, a sort of Best Practices for these people, sounds like a good idea. I should dig out my talk from last Fosdem as well. That might go well with this page.
My first concern was the support problem, what do we (at minimum) expect to have when users say they have a CentOS. A working yum using the CentOS official repositories, a minimal set of official packages (which ?).
Without complying to the list of requirements, they may not refer to CentOS (and people will not have the wrong expectations for support).
http://wiki.centos.org/About/CentOS-product-definition
Feedback please ?
<snip>
Also, as far as I am concerned, if their product has >= 1 rpm taken from CentOS, then thats what it is, based on CentOS, based around CentOS, incorporating CentOS, whatever one might term it as. If its got bits from CentOS, they should be able to tell people its got bits from CentOS.
Agreed, but there's also a big difference between "based on CentOS" (or whatever term one wishes to use) and "is CentOS".
I agree with Dag that solution providers shouldn't be able to sell it as CentOS if it clearly isn't because they've modified, disabled or removed key parts of the system. The community can't be expected to support it when we (the community) don't know what a solution provider has changed or why they have changed it.
So we're back to the question of what can and can't be changed in a system for it still to be CentOS.
What about artwork - if a system has been changed to the point where it is no longer CentOS, but now based on CentOS, can it continue to use the CentOS artwork and logos? What if the artwork alone is changed (rebranding) - is that still CentOS and can it be marketed as such?
Ned Slider wrote:
I agree with Dag that solution providers shouldn't be able to sell it as CentOS if it clearly isn't because they've modified, disabled or removed key parts of the system.
ok, so lets be clear about one thing - no-one except CentOS.org can distribute anything called 'CentOS'. Everything else is just 'derived from, based on, using parts of, inspired from etc.
Karanbir Singh wrote:
Ned Slider wrote:
I agree with Dag that solution providers shouldn't be able to sell it as CentOS if it clearly isn't because they've modified, disabled or removed key parts of the system.
ok, so lets be clear about one thing - no-one except CentOS.org can distribute anything called 'CentOS'. Everything else is just 'derived from, based on, using parts of, inspired from etc.
Agreed - I think the gripes I see mainly stem from hosting providers selling solutions that are based on CentOS as CentOS... the /based on/ seems to get forgotten somewhere along the line. Their not distributing it, just selling a solution using it or based on it.
Ned Slider a écrit :
Karanbir Singh wrote:
Ned Slider wrote:
I agree with Dag that solution providers shouldn't be able to sell it as CentOS if it clearly isn't because they've modified, disabled or removed key parts of the system.
ok, so lets be clear about one thing - no-one except CentOS.org can distribute anything called 'CentOS'. Everything else is just 'derived from, based on, using parts of, inspired from etc.
Agreed - I think the gripes I see mainly stem from hosting providers selling solutions that are based on CentOS as CentOS... the /based on/ seems to get forgotten somewhere along the line. Their not distributing it, just selling a solution using it or based on it.
Things should be more simple if providers could targeted theirs products as a single name branded repo, the same way that centosplus repo deals with other centos upstream repos.
On Tue, 23 Dec 2008, Karanbir Singh wrote:
Ned Slider wrote:
I agree with Dag that solution providers shouldn't be able to sell it as CentOS if it clearly isn't because they've modified, disabled or removed key parts of the system.
ok, so lets be clear about one thing - no-one except CentOS.org can distribute anything called 'CentOS'. Everything else is just 'derived from, based on, using parts of, inspired from etc.
So can they distribute centos-release verbatim ? Because that is the problem to me. They may state somewhere that it is based on, but the users sees /etc/redhat-release and that clearly says CentOS.
The user thinks he is getting CentOS and we are expecting different things when giving support. Yum problems clearly are the big offender here, but I can imagine other things as well. I'd prefer to clearly state that centos-release cannot be distributed if it does not comply with some rules. (We can of course also forbid distributing some other things that hold CentOS in that case)
( managed to screw up my last reply )
Ned Slider wrote:
I agree with Dag that solution providers shouldn't be able to sell it as CentOS if it clearly isn't because they've modified, disabled or removed key parts of the system.
who defines what is key and what isnt ? We can come up with a list of what 'we' consider to be 'vital' for the system to still be refred to as a CentOS based install - and we should do that ( isnt that what the wiki page in question is trying to do ? )
The community can't be expected to support it when we (the community) don't know what a solution provider has changed or why they have changed it.
well. thats a good question. But my question to you would be - what makes one user a part of the community and another not ?
Flip side is, we only need to make a best effort - after all, the $provider of $BrokenSystems should be the upstream support group for these people, no ? If they wander down to the centos mechanisms they are welcome to.
So we're back to the question of what can and can't be changed in a system for it still to be CentOS.
For it to be exactly CentOS ? nothing can be changed. Nothing added, nothing removed.
For it to be a reasonable CentOS'ish install ? I am sure we can come up with a list.
Karanbir Singh wrote:
( managed to screw up my last reply )
Ned Slider wrote:
I agree with Dag that solution providers shouldn't be able to sell it as CentOS if it clearly isn't because they've modified, disabled or removed key parts of the system.
who defines what is key and what isnt ? We can come up with a list of what 'we' consider to be 'vital' for the system to still be refred to as a CentOS based install - and we should do that ( isnt that what the wiki page in question is trying to do ? )
Yes to your last question, and to your first question - who better CentOS core devs to do that!
The community can't be expected to support it when we (the community) don't know what a solution provider has changed or why they have changed it.
well. thats a good question. But my question to you would be - what makes one user a part of the community and another not ?
God point - I've never really looked at it like that. I just try to offer the best help I am able to whomever I can. Sometime the best advice we can give is to seek support from their provider when the provider has altered the product as one would hope the provider is going to have a more intimate knowledge as to what they've done and why they've done it than we are.
Flip side is, we only need to make a best effort - after all, the $provider of $BrokenSystems should be the upstream support group for these people, no ? If they wander down to the centos mechanisms they are welcome to.
Agreed, and nothing to add really to my comments above.
So we're back to the question of what can and can't be changed in a system for it still to be CentOS.
For it to be exactly CentOS ? nothing can be changed. Nothing added, nothing removed.
For it to be a reasonable CentOS'ish install ? I am sure we can come up with a list.
It may actually be easier to come up with a list of things we wouldn't expect them to change (like the kernel, for example) as opposed or in addition to a list of things a genuine CentOS system should include. Less wiggle room for inventive marketing?
-
Dag Wieers -
Dag Wieers -
Jean-Marc LIGER -
Jim Wildman -
Karanbir Singh -
Ned Slider -
R P Herrold -
Roger Pena Escobio